Designer and creator of ex-libris and monograms, René Wiener built up an excellent reputation as a bookbinder. In 1893, at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts Salon, he presented eight book-bindings produced in collaboration with Victor Prouvé and Camille Martin. Both admired and criticized, these bindings were the first recognition of a distinctive Nancy “school” of decorative art. After his brief collaboration with Prouvé and Martin, he decided to broaden his contacts. The Nancy artists Emile Friant, Jacques Gruber, Louis Guingot and Parisian artists Toulouse-Lautrec, Rudnicki, and Auriol were amongst those who supplied him with sketches for his bindings. In 1900, he sold his bookshop and the following year, on the early death of his only daughter, he gave up the book-binding business. A well-known art lover, he left the Lorraine Historical Museum almost all of his entire collection in 1939, including an important collection of documents.